Stewart Fotheringham poses for a photo with his Suffolk Punch horses Stormy and Deedee from the barn at his Whippletree Farm in Round Hill, N.S. Fotheringham uses the work horses to harvest logs. (RYAN TAPLIN / Staff)

It’s the depth of winter and it’s time to get to work.

Stewart Fotheringham’s workday begins with petting two soft noses, and tethering up about 1,800 kilograms of horseflesh. Deedee and Stormy, 13-year-old workhorses, have no complaints as they slosh through the snow into the woods.

The trio spends on average four days a week, depending on the weather, bringing down trees and pulling logs through the woods.

Quite often Fotheringham is told using horses for farm work is “cute” and peers ask him when he’s going to upgrade to a tractor. It doesn’t bother him though.

“I like to think about it as going back to something that we shouldn’t have been so quick to abandon. It’s something that just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it needs to be discarded,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean we’re not driving cars or using computers, it’s just using a tool to do what we do and it’s helping us to do it really well.”

Fotheringham’s love of woodworking came along well before he ever met a horse. As a child, he learned woodworking, carpentry and furniture making from his grandpa, father and uncle.

“When I was building boats and furniture obviously I was wondering about where the wood was coming from that I was using.”

He didn’t have to dig too deep to find out most of it was coming from devastated forests from around the world. That’s when the germ of an idea grew: harvesting his own wood, milling it and crafting it from there.

“I figured if I’m going to do it, I better get some horses and some land.”

But first came the horses. In 2006, he signed up for a horse-logging apprenticeship program in Ontario. He describes it as a tough, sink-or-swim, one-year program. Trainees were given the reins and told to go for it, a bit intimidating for someone like Fotheringham who’d never worked with horses before.

“If you’re trying to learn that kind of thing, it’s hard to find someone to teach you or somewhere formal to get that kind of training,” he said.

But with the help of several people in the program, Fotheringham finished it and started researching workhorse breeds.

Suffolk Punch horses, bred in England for plowing heavy soil, are an endangered breed. They’re low and stocky instead of the tall and trim workhorses used to pull kids on wagon rides. Instead, they’re better at transferring their energy into pulling more efficiently, Fotheringham said.

“I sort of fixated on this breed and then found out there’s hardly any of them in Canada so we ended up finding this pair in New York State.”

He bought Deedee and Stormy, a mare and gelding, for $3,000. Fotheringham and his wife, Nicole Burkhard, sheltered their horses while they lived and worked on someone else’s farm. For years, Fotheringham worked for several farmers, using his horses for logging.

“The price right now for horses is quite low because the demand is down a bit. But I think if you’re going to use them for work, it’s one of the best investments you can make.”

Even though horse-logging is a lost art, Fotheringham said it seems there’s a bit of resurgence in small-scale farming. But most people who own draft horses are keeping them to breed, sell as pets, or take them to horse shows.

Fotheringham said he’d never “upgrade” to a tractor when horses make way more sense. They don’t use gas, they’re self-repairing, self-replicating and the fuel they require is easily grown on a farm. Plus, horses can get into tighter spots than tractors, and they leave less of a footprint in the forest.

“As a bigger picture, it’s about going slower, too, being more careful. The bigger the machine you’re using, the more it’s a blunt tool that’s getting things done really quickly but you can’t take the time to be careful and do a good job,” he said.

“You can take a breath and look around. Take the time to see what needs to be done and actually do it.”

Four years ago when they bought their own land in Round Hill, near Annapolis Royal, and called it Whippletree Farm, they only had a small garden. They grew just what they could use for themselves, family and friends. The horses worked all winter logging, but snoozed in the sun and ate grass all summer. That was about to change.

It started with a small program where they delivered boxes of in-season produce to their customers. But within a few years they had increased their garden size, scaled up their deliveries and reserved stalls at two farmers markets on the weekend.

No more summers off for the horses. Deedee and Stormy now help out in the garden all summer and in the woods logging all winter.

Joel Huntley, owner of Moon Tide Farm in Scots Bay, has an all-season workhorse, too. His Percheron workhorse Queenie doesn’t do much logging in the winter, but she plows the driveway occasionally.

As with anything, especially farm tools, horses have their share of cons too, Huntley said. A job can take a lot longer with a horse, and a farmer can’t just gas it up and go like a tractor. Huntley said horses require more work and more commitment.

He was first introduced to horse farming three years ago when a friend with a team of horses helped him out on his farm. He said he was intimidated at first working with the big animals and it took him awhile before he was comfortable leading the team himself.

“It takes awhile to get on an emotional level where you’re calm all the time and the horse can sense that. If you’re angry and frustrated, then it’s just going to make the horse angry and confused.”

But it didn’t take long for Huntley to appreciate what horses can do for a small farm. So he bought his own — Queenie, a sleek dark brown powerhouse with a white dot high on her forehead.

“I had to get used to the fact, especially that I was green at it, that I think that I’m going to get all this work done with my horse today, but in fact I’d probably only get about half of that,” Huntley said.

Queenie went lame this summer and took several months off to recuperate. Unfortunately it was at the busiest time of the year when she was needed most and Huntley had to use a tractor to get everything done.

But the extra effort is worth it for people like Huntley, who not only make a living off the land, but care deeply for its future.

“I just preferred it to doing everything by hand or by a tractor. I wanted to cut down on fossil fuel consumption, so if there’s another way of doing something where I don’t have to burn so much fuel, then I’m all for that.”